DREAMS BROUGHT FAME.

Taranaki Daily News, 26 November 1921, Page 10

DREAMS BROUGHT FAME.

WONDERFUL INSPIRATIONS BORN IN SLEEP. It is one of the mysteries of sleep that under its magic influence men are sometimes inspired to do things which are impossible in their wakeful moments. Robert Louis Stevenson, the famous novelist. <Fd not conceal the fact that much of his inspiration came to him during his hours of slumber. “The Brownies,” he said, “do half my work during sleep. I have always been a great dreamer, and many of my dreams have been horrible nightmares. In others I have wandered all over the earth, have explored strange countries and cities, andx read more wonderful books than could be found in any library.” UNEARTHLY MUSIC. Of Coleridge and “Kubla. Khan” the following strange story is told. The poet had fallen asleep in his chair after reading the following lines in Purchas’s “Pilgrimage”: “Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built and a stately garden thereunto; and thus ten miles of fertile ground were enclosed j with a wall.” “Tn my sleep,” he said, "'I dreamed •200 lines of beautiful poetry. The images rose up before me without any sensation or consciousness on my part. When I awoke the lines were vivid in my memory, and I began to write them.” As ill-luck would have it, however, a friend called to see him before he had completed his task; and when, an hour later, he sat down to continue his work his memory was a blank. His wonderful dream-poem was thus lost to the world. Dr. Anna Kingsford, a well-known writer of a generation ago, declared that almost every line she published had come to her during sleep. Of one of her books she wrote: “These chronicles are not the result of any conscious effort of imagination. They are records of dreams occurring at intervals during th® last few years.” Curiously enough, these dreams never came to her in her own home, but always during her travels on the Continent.

Tt was to dreams that the world owes Dante’s immortal “Divine Comedy”; Vol tai res’ “Henriade,” which “occurred to me in spite of myself, and in which I had no part”; and part at least 01 Campbell’s “Lochiel’s Warning.” But the most remarkable of these stories of dream-inspiration is that of Tartini’s world famous “Devil’s Sonata.”

“One night I dreamt that J met the Devil,” said the composer. “I handed my violin to him and asked him to play a solo on it. He took the instrument and began to play music of such wonderful, unearthly beauty that I was entranced. When the music ceased 1 awoke, jumped out of bed, and reproduced it as accurately as I could.” MYSTERIES OF SLEEP. But such stories might be multiplied almost indefinitely—from that of the Bristol mechanic who dreamt that it was raining shot, and thus discovered the secret of making pellets by pouring molten lead from a height, to the late Mr. S. R. Crockett, who once received payment for a story which he had not only written but ’posted in his sleep. Not the least wonderful of these stories is that told a few weeks ago of a Swiss maid-of-all-work who. when awake, does not know a note of music, but in her sleep comes downstairs, sits at the piano, and plays the most difficult works of composers whose names she has never heard.